Although the program was delayed and the annual launch finale event in Huntsville cancelled, 54 teams were able to compete remotely in the design, building and testing portions of the 2020 NASA Student Launch competition, and the UNC Charlotte Rocketry team finished second overall, and first in the payload portion of the event.

The 2020 NASA competition required college and university teams to design and build rocket and payload systems that would launch to a specified altitude, then during decent of after landing deploy a vehicle that would navigate to a designated sample site, retrieve a simulated sample of planetary ice, and navigate at least 10 feet away from the site with the sample stored safely aboard.

In late July, NASA announced virtually the overall and category winners of the competition. The top overall teams were Vanderbilt University, UNC Charlotte, and the University of Alabama Huntsville.

More information about the 49er Rocketry team's success visit the Lee College of Engineering's article here.

We are excited to announce we have exceeded our goal of $17,000! Thank you to everyone for all of your continued support. There is still one day left in our campaign if anyone has any last donations. Thank you again and we'll be sure to continue to update you on our progress as we make our way to Huntsville!

These are some photos of our team as we prepare for our subscale launch this weekend!

The 49er Rocketry team is blown away by the support of alumni and friends -- we have surpassed our goal and would like to continue on this momentum to establish a new fundraising goal of $17,000 to be able to purchase the needed materials for the Spring 2020 NASA Student Launch Competition. 

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported our team and program thus far in the semester! We hope to hit our new goal and be able to purchase the needed materials to be successful.

We are excited to announce that we have passed $6,000! Thank you to everyone who has been supporting us. With your continued support, we look forward to having a successful year!

The 49er Rocketry Team has been keeping busy the past couple of weeks. We’ve been involved with multiple educational engagement events including volunteering at J.M. Robinson Middle School, Kid’s Fest, and Explore.

We’ve also had the first PDR Q&A session with NASA and are working hard to meet our design deadlines of November 1st. We’ll continue to keep you updated on our progress and post our Proposal and PDR to our website after the submission.

Thank you again for all of your support and we look forward to keeping you updated as we continue to reach our future milestones!